BookRenter Visits Local School

The BookRenter Team took a mini-excursion to Capri Elementary School in Campbell, California to spend some time talking about the importance of education and going to college. Hopefully, the kids had as much fun as we did.

It’s been forever since I had to sign in at the front desk of a school and slap on a name tag. Armed with a box of goodies and fun facts about both what we do at BookRenter and higher education we crossed the playground and headed into our first class.

We began with simple introductions and gave a short overview of what each of us do in our roles at BookRenter. We talked a bit about why renting your books just makes sense – kind of like going to the library. We explained how BookRenter donates to First Book for every rental, putting books in the hands of kids just like them.

Finally we opened up the floor for questions (in preparation for our visit the kids had written questions on sticky notes). Here are some of the highlights:

-What do you do at BookRenter?

-Why are textbooks so expensive?

-How many hours do you work?

-How many years do you have to go to school to be a doctor?

-Do you have books about dress making?

-Does BookRenter have any books over 1,000 pages?

During our Q&A time Rebecca’s phone (our community manager) began ringing. She quickly turned it off and put it back in her pocket. One of the boys in the class raised his hand and asked, “Are we that important to you that you would hang up on a call like that?” Rebecca responded, “YES” (of course).

Another boy in the class announced that his dad’s phone was way cooler than Rebecca’s phone. His dad has an iPhone 4 and works for Apple. This same young man had one of our favorite comments of the day. We had asked how many of the kids wanted to go to college. His response: “I don’t want to go to college I plan on working in a fast food place or a coffee shop.” Something tells me that he will change his mind when he realizes how much an iPhone 4 costs.

Many of the kids had general questions about college, so it was exciting to see that they were enthusiastic about the process and that BookRenter could help enlighten them. But I think each student’s favorite part was receiving a cute fuzzy BookRenter bookmark!

1) Very cool that you are visiting schools and participating in the community
2) Really with the coffee shop/fast food restaurant kid, he needs to see a career counciler already.
3)At least some kids were interested in college
4) I want a fuzzy bookmark…Lol

Yeah I know I’m still wondering why textbooks are so expensive myself. I know when I was in elementary school it was always so exciting to have anyone visit the class. It sounded like BookRenter did a lot of good =)

I would rent books but I think they said you need the books I have for your personal collection blah blah blah…helps to get a job in my field when they ask what books you have to tell them certain books…